It's kind of funny that Curtis Mayfield's 3rd solo album "Roots" is always rated very highly, coming as it does in the middle of perhaps the greatest consecutive string of soul albums ever, but it's still a bit of sacrilege to declare it a "perfect" album on par with the 3 other classics that surround it. It's always "almost there but not quite". In some sense this sentiment is understandable. Curtis' solo debut was a complete gamechanger and set the stage for the fiery social commentary, lush orchestration, and rumbling funk of 70s soul. This was followed by the stripped-to-the-bone live set that was, production-wise, the complete antithesis of its predecessor but lyrically even more charged. In this light, "Roots" is seen as a return to the lush, extended modes of the debut, serving as a holding pattern until he showed everybody how it's done with the monumental "Superfly".